


Eyes With A Fire, Unquenched

by gaialux



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Creature Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Knotting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26435314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/pseuds/gaialux
Summary: After being bitten by a Sheket, Geralt undergoes even more mutations.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 147
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	Eyes With A Fire, Unquenched

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Binary_Sunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binary_Sunset/gifts).



> Written for Fandom Trumps Hate. I hope you enjoy!

Most monsters will kill you dead.

At least that’s what Geralt learnt from his years both at Kaer Morhen and, more so, with his work as a witcher.

They could also injure you, yes, if you weren’t deft or fast enough. Geralt had his fair share of near-miss scars and scabs. Blood trails which townsfolk could track and scream that he was a fraud, a charlatan, someone only in the job for the money.

Of course he wanted the damn money. This was the only life he could be offered so why not get something in return? If the village wanted to have its inhabitants or livestock slaughtered then so be it. Geralt knew how to walk away and never look back in guilt. It wasn’t his fault people were reluctant to trust him. There were always witchers around and, eventually, most towns would come to their senses and hire a professional.

If death didn’t strike the large majority of them first.

So yes, while death was usually the end goal of monsters, that wasn’t the case for one hundred percent of them.

Everybody knows the tales of the Sheket. A small but fearsome creature that feeds on the human psyche and can transform those it deems of interest into itself. Few people have ever encountered such a creature and most have decided it is simply a scary legend told to children so they don’t think wicked thoughts to entice the Sheket into finding them.

Even Geralt believed this despite reading about them in Kaer Morhen history books. Gazing upon the image that looked more like a goblin than some ferocious creature, at least until it opened its mouth and you saw razor-sharp teeth and a tongue of a thousand tentacles.

Geralt went many, many decades without so much was hearing a whiff of this creature but that didn’t make it any less real. What the history books didn’t say was that it could also wipe memories, devour souls, and hide deep underground for as long as it needed to re-emerge when it was ready and willing to strike. 

Geralt was one of the unlucky ones and he wasn’t even on a quest.

There’s a sleepy town by the name of Kaienne that Geralt often passed through if he were in need of a quick meal and rest. While the townsfolk looked at him strangely with his shining yellow eyes and violent white hair the first few times, they still served him and spoke politely. By the fifth time through he was as much a fixture as the tavern cat who hissed at him periodically from the corner.

He had finished a dish of questionable ingredient stew and was making his way to the inns across the way when a creature stepped from the shadows. Geralt drew his sword but he was not fast enough. He hadn’t expected this and cursed himself during the few seconds between realisation and attack for not always being on guard.

 _Nowhere is safe_ , he had been taught. _Nowhere is without evil for you to hunt._

The creature’s multiple tongues struck the side of the witcher’s neck first. Wet and boiling hot to the touch. He hissed out a streaming sound of pain and continued to blindly reach for his holstered sword. Too slow. The tongues retracted and in their place came the teeth. Jagged, sharp points like that of the barghest only three times the size and not at all scared of Geralt. The teeth pierced Geralt’s flesh and turned his world dark.

...

Geralt awoke in a room he recognised. The inn he was trying to reach. 

Had the Sheket been a dream?

His neck and throat ached, his eyes struggling to adjust to the light in a way they hadn’t since before he became a witcher. That was the first sign something was wrong. The second was when his go to elixirs -- simple healing potions created by a sorceress in a nearby town -- did nothing to dull the pain. It continued to throb, bright and hot, as he walked around the room and collected his things. Someone had slung his sword over a splintered wooden chair and poured water into a shallow bowl. He splashed it over his face and arms before turning to the mirror in the corner.

The vision staring back at him made him draw his sword before realisation hit. Memories of that book. Written words and images flying through his mind.

_Transformation. Control. Mutation._

Being a mutant already didn’t seem to have made Geralt immune to the possibility of changing again. His once yellow eyes had taken on the sickly reptilian green of the Sheket, his skin impossibly whiter, and the roots of his hair taking on a shade of grey-black that, even as he watched, spread further down the hair shaft.

That was the last thing Geralt remembered before he passed out again.

...

Change takes time. Change of a body that had already mutated from human to witcher is excruciating and slow. Elixirs did nothing and Geralt had neither the strength nor idiocy to call in a sorcerer for something stronger and more targeted. He would be killed. Either by the sorcerer himself or a witcher hired for pittance. He still didn’t know who brought him to the inn but was now sure they weren’t waiting to kill him -- too many cycles of days and nights had passed to make that a likelihood.

He slept. He woke. He drank small amounts of water but never ate. His body tried to rebel, his stomach flip-flopping and head screaming.

He would die. He was sure of it.

And, after mere hours of this, he welcomed it.

...

He didn't die.

...

Turns out, people hire monster killers. Not witchers, not sorcererers, not hunters. They simply want anyone who has a track record for killing monsters and saving the dying village.

This works out well for Geralt after the worst of things has passed. Some part of him has become a Sheket and nothing he tries to do has stopped that. After contemplating ending things by his own hand, he took the chance to walk into a town and offer to kill the kikimora terrorising them for a laughably small sum of money. The people were terrified of him but accepted. He killed the beast, received enough gold for a single meal, and went on his way.

Then and there he decided maybe there was something to his skills that went beyond one’s identity.

Geralt has been travelling, killing, living in what meager ways he can, when he runs into somebody he knew...well, _before_ , he supposes.

“Geralt?” It’s impossible not to recognise Jaskier’s voice. The somehow irritating yet melodic tone he employs both when speaking and singing. “Is that _you_?”

Geralt turns around to see his friend sitting in a corner of the tavern. Strange enough for him not to be the center of attention, but he realises Jaskier is _afraid_ of him. His eyes and stance are cautious as Geralt comes closer.

“It’s me,” Geralt says.

“What happened to you?” The words are purely aghast.

“Want to take this outside?”

Jaskier hesitates for a few seconds but eventually decides to trust Geralt. Either he’s naive or an idiot but Geralt can’t decide which. He also can’t deny there’s some relief to seeing a familiar face that trusts him, at least a little. Any of his old allies or even people he has helped out in the past now run at the sight of him. He is no longer Geralt the Witcher -- he is simply a monster, like those he was trained to kill.

They walk out into a mostly empty courtyard, a few drunk people milling around the sides who pay them no heed.

“So.” Jaskier leans in close and studies Geralt. From his eyes to his mouth to his body to his feet. Trying to understand what it is he’s seeing like everyone else who isn’t so scared of Geralt they turn away at first sight. “What happened to you?”

“A Sheket.”

“What is a Sheket?”

Geralt grasps Jaskier’s arm and drags him in closer. The thumping of his heart is palpable under Geralt’s fingertips. His breath stinking of fear. “Keep it down.”

“Sorry.”

Geralt releases his grip and Jaskier stumbles back a few steps, his lute bumping on his back.

“Are you okay?” Jaskier asks. “Are you...you?”

Geralt laughs bitterly. It’s painful in his chest. “As me as I can be.”

“Does it...hurt?”

“What’s with the act, Dandelion?” Geralt asks. “I’m still a witcher. I can still feel how terrified you are.”

“I’m not--” But he cuts off, knows bullshitting has never worked on Geralt. “Okay. I am scared. But you’re also my friend and that gives me empathy you sorely lack.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

A drunk over in the corner starts loudly throwing up and Geralt urges Jaskier deeper into the shadows. Only a single torch in the back alley of a nearby tavern illuminates the area.

“Do you want to tell me what a She-whatever is?” Jaskier asks.

“A monster,” Geralt says, and that seems to satisfy. Jaskier may have always been happy to come along on quests with Geralt but he rarely asked for great details unless they could add to his poetry. Monsters were monsters were monsters. Scary things that went bump in the dark and slaughtered indiscriminately. “I am still Geralt.”

And that, simply his name, seems to be all Jaskier needs to fall back into old habits. Rising on his tip-toes and kissing Geralt square on the lips.

“Warmer,” Jaskier says.

“I’m a new version of me then, I suppose.”

Geralt had originally planned to grab Roach and start toward a new village. If they sent him away, he would rough it for a few nights until finding another quest. Nomadic lifestyles were common for him, normal, but with Jaskier close enough for Geralt to touch and hold and taste and fuck he’s reluctant to turn on his heel and leave.

Not that he’ll ever tell Jaskier that. Not outright.

“I have a room,” Jaskier says, taking Geralt’s thoughts like he somehow always does and putting them out into the world through a stream of air. Songs, poems, conversations. Geralt struggles but Jaskier knows how to spin tales. “You coming?”

Of course he is and Jaskier knows as such. He practically drags Geralt through the courtyard and down an alleyway with more drunks standing around. A horse stands at the end, head raised, watching them both. It balks at Geralt. They do that now, horses, the only animal that was never afraid of him before he stopped being _him_.

“That’s strange,” Jaskier says. Again, an echo of Geralt’s thoughts. Saying what Geralt could say but can’t. So, so many things.

“It’s fine,” Geralt says.

“If you say so.”

Jaskier’s room is even more pitiful than the rooms Geralt had been renting -- enough space for a single straw bed, chamber pot, and a three legged chair that Jaskier places his lute on.

Not that Geralt has much time to take in the room before Jaskier is on him. Warm mouth, warm hands, the smell of beer and even something that reminds Geralt of a field they walked through once, mint and a spicy local plant mingling together as they made their way through the huge tufts of grass that stung their faces and arms.

But even this feels different, and that image, the one of the Sheket in the textbooks, comes back in full force. The multiple tongues striking out like the heads of a thousand vipers.

Geralt’s tongue looks like that now.

“That’s...different,” Jaskier says. His hair is a mess and his lips are stubble-burnt. When was the last time Geralt shaved? When was the last time he washed himself with more than a wet cloth?

“I can stop,” Geralt says. He tries to speak with his mouth clamped shut -- which doesn’t work for obvious reasons. His mouth is quiet now. Tongues retracted. 

_Normal, normal, normal_.

“No,” Jaskier shakes his head and that messy hair flies around. “It felt...good, actually. Did I ever tell you about that hooker in--”

“I don’t want to know, Dandelion,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s sexual escapade stories always border on the terrifying, bizarre, or -- at worst -- grotesque once he gets started.

Jaskier quirks his head, seems to consider it, and then says, “Understandable. But it did feel good. All of this--” He gestures over Geralt’s body. “I want to know what it can do.”

It was the same line Jaskier had used after they first kissed. Drunk on cheap wine and ale from a tavern after Geralt slayed a Koshcey. He’d never been with a man, he said, face a little red and a coy smile. The one and only time Geralt had ever seen Jaskier embarrassed.

“Is the rest of your body…” Jaskier begins, breathless again already, cheeks flushed, chest heaving. “...normal?”

Geralt chuckles under his breath. “Since when was it ever normal?”

“I mean.” Jaskier takes a step back, hands still on Geralt’s arms, but that sense of fear is back in his eyes and Geralt hates it. He wants Jaskier on him again, like they always used to fall into, and to treat him like he was any other sentient being. Not a witcher, not a mutant, simply Geralt. “Are you going to _hurt_ me?”

“Have I ever hurt you before?”

Geralt lacks emotions, he knows this, and the Sheket hasn’t enhanced them any. But it still wounds some deep down part of him to know Jaskier thinks him capable of causing Jaskier pain.

“No,” Jaskier admits. He takes a little step closer. His vest has come loose at the top most buttons and Geralt gets a view of delicious flesh. “But I’m used to...you.”

“You’re used to a witcher,” Geralt says. “And you know I wasn’t born that way.”

They look at each other. Geralt’s eyes able to take in the shapes in the corners, able to see out the grimey little window into the empty pathways leading to the other rooms. He knows Jaskier can’t see more than what is contained in these four walls.

And his eyes don’t move from Geralt.

Geralt kisses him and Jaskier doesn’t move away. If anything, he comes closer. Body flush against Geralt’s and mouth hungrily asking for more. Like it always is when they fall back into each other. When they fall back onto a bed or a pile of hay or the hard dirt next to the smoldering remains of a campfire. It’s him and Jaskier. The rest of the world has faded away.

Geralt hasn’t had sex since this transformation. Not that he’s had the chance -- everyone new is terrified of him, Yennifer is missing, and Jaskier hadn’t popped up until this very night. He could try his luck at a brothel, sure, but even those women could turn him down based on the way he looked.

It was easier to keep to himself, keep his head down, work and eat and sleep and move on.

Now he realises how much his body aches. How much Jaskier’s touch brings his body to life and makes him ache for more.

“Still feel like you,” Jaskier says, quiet, lips against Geralt’s throat as he says the words.

Geralt hurries with Jaskier’s buttons, hands still deft and fast and able to take down monsters or gently hold a lover. Shirt off. Smooth skin. Geralt runs his hands along what he knows and that touch, that sensation, is more of the same.

Then he keeps kissing, those tongues twisting with Jaskier’s. Sucking the skin on his neck. He gets more turned on, gets so hard it aches and the world starts going to tunnel vision. The room. The bed. Jaskier. Jaskier’s hands. Jaskier’s face. All Geralt can see and Jaskier pulls back.

The world floods back into view.

“What just happened?” Jaskier says.

Geralt’s mouth tries to form words that his brain fails to supply. He ends up looking -- and feeling -- like a fish out of water. Stranded on a river bank with a hook pierced through his jaw.

“Geralt?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally in a voice he doesn’t recognise as his own.

Jaskier touches him. Runs his hand down Geralt’s cheek and Geralt leans into him. Involuntary. More power Jaskier has over him that he’ll never truly understand.

On the bed. Uncomfortable but more comfortable than plenty of other places Geralt has spent the night. Jaskier a heavy, comforting weight on top of him. Hard. Waiting. Hips moving against Geralt’s in a slow, subtle way that makes Geralt wonder if Jaskier is even aware of what he’s doing.

“I want to see you,” Jaskier says. That waver is still in his voice, but hidden down deep.

Part of Geralt wants to drag that fear up to the surface, out into the world, to look at and understand it. To dissect these feelings Jaskier is able to have that Geralt can never experience for himself. Not truly. The emotion of envy, of numbness, that’s all he has been granted.

Instead he shucks his clothes. Furs, coats, his leathers and gloves and armour and worn cotton blouse. His pants that have started to split along the seams but it’s replace them or eat and his stomach screams louder than his legs.

Jaskier stares at him. At his body that was always scared and marked, injured, ugly. But now it is mottled with a glimmer. Scales. Only visible when the light hits him in a specific way -- like now. The lamplight ruining any illusion Geralt was trying for.

“It’s nothing,” Geralt says. Even he can hear the lies in his voice that is supposed to be monotone, blank, void.

Jaskier reaches out. Touches the skin with his callused yet gentle fingertips. Tickles the scales, the normal skin, the scars. Smooths out his palm and touches every bit of Geralt that is within reach.

“Feels like lute strings,” he says. Then he laughs. “Wow.”

But he doesn’t pull away.

...

Witcher elixirs work in various ways for Geralt now. They can heal most bites, scratches, or cuts from monsters but rarely do they give him the additional powers he once so relied on. The Sheket improved his ability to see things, those little details proving important, but not much else. Maybe being a freak to start with meant there was no further space left to go down.

He does, however, still have access to the elixirs’s double use. Slick herbs and oils that make Jaskier that much more aroused and attuned to sensations.

“Geralt,” Jaskier says. “You okay?”

He’s more than okay, but Geralt simply grunts an affirmative and comes back to the bed with a vial in hand. Carpolobia, ginseng, yohimba, and others he doesn’t know the name of but knows they work. He stretches out Jaskier, slow and gentle, until Jaskier demands more. Harder. Rocks back against him and takes hold of Geralt’s cock with an angle that can’t be comfortable but Jaskier doesn’t appear to care.

“More, Geralt,” he says and the words disintegrate into moans. The only time Jaskier is rendered speechless.

He opens Jaskier wider. Widest. Jaskier rocks back on his fingers and murmurs words -- poems, really -- that Geralt fails to catch. Too focused on Jaskier’s body, on his own body that he no longer understands. Cock hardening. Aching. Geralt looks down and--

It’s a strange sensation. Being disconnected from your body. Something Geralt has experienced exactly three, vivid times:

Once, when he became a Witcher.

Once, when he became a Sheket.

Once, three fingers deep in his lover, when he looks down at his penis and sees how thick and throbbing it has grown.

Jaskier follows his gaze and bulks. But only a little. Only enough for his eyes to grow wide but not enough for his body to pull back. Jaskier is still here, still _wanting_ , and it gives Geralt the confidence to continue on.

“I don’t think it will hurt you,” he says, and he’s sure it’s true. There might be a disconnect, a confusion, but he is still Geralt and this is still Jaskier.

Everything will be okay.

He enters Jaskier. Hot, slick, like coming home. And he realises, in that moment, that Jaskier _has_ become a home for him. One with two arms and two legs and two eyes and one heart. A place he can always go back to, no matter what happens to him.

His cock grows impossibly bigger. He feels the pulsing of blood. Feels the narrowing of his pupils, the sharpness of his teeth against his tongues that pulsate. Grow. Separate. Like serpents trying to break free from their nest. Is this how the Sheket always feels? Is this why they are so aggressive, so forthcoming, so ready for attack?

Hard. Harder. This light overcoming him. Jaskier’s back turning hot under his hands. His cock growing its knot. Tight. Too tight. Not tight enough all at once.

Jaskier moaning. Speaking. A litany of words even Geralt’s attuned hearing can’t catch, but he’s sure it’s poetry. Poetry filling the room around them, between them, inside them.

When he comes, he sees everything and nothing all at once. His past, his future, the present life from here to Nilfgaard and back again. Around this world, even the places he has never travelled. But he lands back in Jaskier’s arms. His cock throbbing but spent. Filling Jaskier and keeping him here. Keeping them connected. Then softening, falling out, leaving Jaskier gaping and blissed out.

It looks, remarkably, like the body he knew before. But Geralt knows this won't last long.

And this is when Jaskier gets a different Geralt. One who is soft, gentle, slow. Not waiting for the next hunt or the next need to run. He lies back on the lumpy, pokey, uncomfortable bed and wraps an arm around Jaskier's sweaty, naked body.

Here they will stay until morning dawns.

**Author's Note:**

> The Sheket is a creature of my own, vague creation.


End file.
